


Silver

by Gabri



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Gen, How to Train Your Dragon 2 Spoilers, parent neglect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-13 01:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2132823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabri/pseuds/Gabri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"At least I’m not boring," she says.</p>
<p>Hiccup thinks of growing up with a mother there to tell him bedtime stories, there to soothe him when his father scolded too harshly, and thought, <i>you wouldn't have been.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver

"At least I’m not boring," she says.

Hiccup thinks of growing up with a mother there to tell him bedtime stories, there to soothe him when his father scolded too harshly, and thought, _you wouldn’t have been._

 

She offers him gifts and rarities, dragon species he’s never even dreamed of catching a glimpse of. When he sulks, she distracts him with liquid silver, beautiful dragons sculpted from the sea, gemstones made of ice.

Hiccup says “ _wow_ ," and lets her force that ache in his heart to the very back.

Valka is free. Valka is brave. Valka is all the things he thought he would be in the coming years, if he had never met her and continued on his own path. She’s a woman with the soul of a dragon. And the heart of a dragon, too. It’s remarkably like the Bewilderbeast she shows off to him: hard, icy, and with better to do than trouble herself with small children.

She dances. She preens. He shows her how well he’s grown without her, the things he’s created without her help. How much better he’s done after all, without her there. He wants to think, maybe, that he was a treasure she made the mistake of passing up.

Give me another chance, she says, and she offers him secrets, more gems, more gifts. Mother and Son, she says. No one else matters, or perhaps they just aren’t special enough. ‘Different’ enough. She has what she wants. And she does want, and so does Hiccup. Because she’s incredible, she’s fascinating, and inside her bubbles twenty years of that unknown treasure of a world that he’s searched for above all else.

He doesn’t think about how if she had come home right away, she might not have had those things to offer. She might not have had anything to offer but her love. Now he’s been starved for it, and _now_ it’s all here, and it’s as if he hadn’t even known how full he could be until she found him worthy enough to feed.

Toothless’s new fins are amazing. But if he could choose between fins and childhood memories of Valka’s face, he knows which one he’d pick.

It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t his choice to make.

And besides, now he can make those tight turns.

He’s pathetically grateful that she’s here when he’s hurting. He tries not to think of how she hurt him first. She’s slipped words into his mouth: ‘ _it broke my heart to stay away_ ’. She hadn’t mentioned the state of his heart. He’s not sure if that’s because she hadn’t cared, or if she just didn’t know enough of it to consider it broken.

When Valka grieves, she does it alone. When Hiccup grieves, she gathers him up, combs her fingers through his hair as if they have a right to be there now that she’d decided it’s so. She tells him stories of his father; the first time they met, the proud things he’d say when Hiccup was an infant and nobody could guess yet what he might become.

Hiccup tries to tell her of life with the two of them, him and his father, and how it was hard, but it was a life with love. It’s a silly thing to say, as if he needs to explain that sort of love to her. As if she might not understand it. But then, it’s very easy to love someone when it’s convenient, and she had such a lovely world outside of him to occupy herself with instead. Who _wouldn’t_ be distracted by all that liquid silver, beautiful dragons sculpted from the sea, gemstones made of ice….

The words thicken in his mouth until he has to stop, and the silence between them is long and broken only by the sound of breathing.

"I’m here." Valka says at last.

"You’re late." Hiccup whispers back.


End file.
